Patricia Mulvihill

Some colorists decorate. Patricia “Trish” Mulvihill orchestrates. A New York City-based colorist who entered comics at twenty-eight and never planned to stay, she spent three decades painting mood and shadow into some of DC and Vertigo’s most storied books — from a six-year run on Wonder Woman to Batman’s grittier corners and the hundred-issue noir masterpiece 100 Bullets. Perfect for fans of atmospheric crime fiction, hand-crafted color work, and the creator-owned golden age of Vertigo.

Mulvihill’s path into comics was pure serendipity. Working as a book-jacket illustrator in the late 1980s, she lived a few doors down from DC’s offices on 54th Street, where her college friend Rob Simpson was an editor. A visit to the office turned into an audition, and her first DC assignment out of the gate was Wonder Woman — a title she colored for about six years, leaving just as digital coloring was taking over. In her Sequential Tart interview, she described her hand-painted era honestly: marker guides, moody palettes chosen over a big cup of tea, and pages “tinkered with” until editors had to pry them from her hands. She jokes that she never learned the formulas of color theory — she flies by the seat of her pants — and it shows in the way every page seems lit from within.

The definitive chapter came when Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso launched 100 Bullets at Vertigo. Mulvihill colored the series from issue #15 through its stunning #100 finale, translating Risso’s high-contrast black-and-white pages into smoky, muted hues that made the book unmistakable on the rack. That run — alongside Batman: Broken City and her Wonder Woman work — earned her the 2004 Eisner Award for Best Coloring, plus back-to-back Don Thompson Awards (1995, 1996) and multiple Eisner and Harvey nominations across the decade. Her partnership with the Azzarello–Risso team continued through Spaceman, Brother Lono, Wednesday Comics, and Flashpoint Batman, while her DC talent profile charts the full arc of her career.

Beyond the Vertigo crime wave, Mulvihill lent her restrained, painterly hand to Lee Bermejo’s Joker graphic novel, Leonardo Manco’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Spirit, Hellblazer, Birds of Prey, and covers and pin-ups for Batman #50, Teen Titans, and Risso’s Hit Girl — and she has kept coloring DC mainstays like Green Lantern and Batman well into the 2020s. She documents her color work on her website, trishm.com, and follows on Twitter at @trishm. Her own philosophy is the best summary of her craft: a colorist should make the main creators look good — mood, atmosphere, and restraint over flash.